Jorge Méndez Blake / Mexico

Mexico born 1974

Jorge Méndez Blake explores the connections between literature and fine arts in his installations and drawings. The neon work Complete poems, 2015, represents a collection of poetry, functioning both as a semiotic and material ‘sign’. As the artist explains: ‘I approach art as someone who is trying to write, but without writing. I make two- and three-dimensional objects that occupy the space between disciplines, where the margins of literature, art, and architecture overlap.’

His suite of drawings Bartlebooth monument, 2011–15, presents the conclusion to an unfinished fictional project described in the novel Life A User’s Manual (1978) by French writer Georges Perec. One of the protagonists is the millionaire Percival Bartlebooth, who embarks on a life-long project to produce 500 watercolours of ports and beaches during a twenty-year trip around the world. Once completed, Bartlebooth despatches each painting to a master craftsman in Paris to turn it into a jigsaw puzzle. After two decades Bartlebooth returns home and begins to assemble the jigsaws. Once completed, each work is sent back to the port where it was painted and soaked in a solution, whereupon the blank painting is returned to Bartlebooth, leaving no trace of his life’s work. Tragically, Bartlebooth dies while working on a jigsaw, having finished only 438 of the planned 500 puzzles. Méndez Blake’s piece presents the missing sixty-two drawings of ports and beaches, which are in the process of fading into nothingness.

BIO

Since 2000 Méndez Blake has taken part in numerous individual and group exhibitions in Guadalajara, Monterrey, Madrid, Montreal, Paris, New York City, Osaka and Oxfordshire. He has received various awards and grants in his native Mexico and has undertaken residencies in Spain, the United States, Italy and the United Kingdom.